Month: April 2008

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The Loving Commandment

Text: John 14:15-21
Date: Easter VI + 4/27/06
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

With minds opened by our Lord Jesus Christ risen from the dead to understand the Scriptures and everything He has said and commanded, we continue to recall His words on that night when He was betrayed, that Holy Passover Thursday when He washed His disciples feet, predicted His betrayal and denials, and comforted our hearts with His words. He said, “Let not your hearts be troubled” and told us of His going away to the cross and now to the Father to prepare a place for us, and that he would come back to take us to Himself, “that where I am you may be also.”

Don’t miss the significance of that promise. For this is the meaning of the title “Immanuel,” God with us, and of our Lord’s entire mission. He came to this earth, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, to be “God with us,” to draw us to Himself and to His Father, to heal the breach of sin that separated us from God and from each other. He was Immanuel, God with us, all the way up to the cross where only He could go for us. Yet, having endured the shame of the cross where He died as the vicarious atonement, the one sin-offering that takes away the sin of the world, He came back from the grave; God with us again. As He would go to prepare a place for us and to rule the whole universe for the sake of His Church, He promised to return as God with us to take us to be with Him in the new, eternal mansions of the new, eternal creation. Yet even now, after He has ascended and before His promised return He does not leave us alone, but sends His Holy Spirit, with and in Whom He has also promised us, “I am with you always to the close of the age;” Immanuel, God with us, and God for us.

In this time of waiting, this time of “in-betweenity,” between His leaving us visibly and His promised visible return, He helps us to live as His new creation, disciples who carry and live and proclaim the Good News, the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins and eternal life to all the world. In that living and proclaiming, we remember these words He spoke to us, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” and “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” Continue reading “The Loving Commandment”

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God Prepares a Place

Text: John 14:1-14
Date: Easter V + 4/20/08
Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word, Rochester Hills, MI

On the first few Sundays of Easter Holy Church recounts those first amazing days when Jesus, risen from the grave, appeared to His disciples. We do not recount all of His eleven recorded resurrection appearances, though His final appearance we will celebrate at His ascension on the fortieth day. But the Easter season is more than just the final farewell come back tour of the late, great Jesus of Nazareth. Beginning with His conversation with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and culminating in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit beginning on the Day of Pentecost, the risen Lord now opens the minds of His disciples that they may understand the Scriptures and everything He had done and said in His earthly ministry. Therefore, we think back and hear again some of those things He said before His Passion, this time with the understanding of faith enlightened with resurrection eyes.

These words from our Lord’s Maundy Thursday farewell discourse are familiar to our ears probably most especially as we hear them most often at Christian funerals. “Let not your hearts be troubled” we hear Him say even as we come face-to-face with that which troubles us most, namely, death. “In my Father’s house are many rooms…I go to prepare a place for you.” And whenever we hear these words we think, mainly, of His ascension and of heaven as our final destination. And that is good and right. But these words were spoken that night in which He was betrayed first with reference to His leaving His disciples by way of the cross and His approaching death. He was going where they and we cannot go: the cross. He was preparing to leave them through His death. Yet, in the light and reality now of His resurrection these words do also speak of His leaving for a place we can go, and by a Way we do know. Continue reading “God Prepares a Place”

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We Follow and Rejoice

We Follow and Rejoice

Text: John 10:1-10
Date: Easter IV + 4/13/08

As when a shepherd calls his sheep,
They know and heed his voice;
So when You call Your fam’ly, Lord,
We follow and rejoice.

Once when Jesus was in Jerusalem during the feast of tabernacles he spoke of himself using the two metaphors, “I am the good shepherd” and “I am the door of the sheep.” St. John tells us, “This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them” (10:6). Now, on the other side of Good Friday and Easter, the Lord opens the minds of his disciples to understand the Scriptures, to believe the Gospel and to live in its light. Now, as our living Lord, risen from the dead, we see what he meant when he said that “he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep,” how he entered by the door in order to become the door, and where he leads his sheep. He entered through the door of the Scriptures as the promised Messiah of Israel to lead His sheep out of the temple of the Old Covenant to the green pastures of the New Testament in His blood (Lk. 22:20).

Psalm 23 in the Old Testament has been a favorite psalm and has provided much comfort especially at Christian funerals. It speaks of the Lord as a shepherd leading his sheep, his people, out into the open green pastures, beside quiet waters on paths of righteousness. It speaks of the life of faith in this world where sin still collects its wages as a journey that involves a short walk down hill through the valley of the shadow of death. Yet the sheep fear no evil because the shepherd is there, his rod shooing away threatening wolves and his staff there to drag us back from the precipice of any danger. Then there is the strange yet beautiful image of the Lord himself preparing a feast out there in the wilderness. After all of this, however, the destination of the flock in Psalm 23 is found when the shepherd leads them back to the temple—“and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” Psalm 23 is about God’s care and protection of and provision for his people, and how their true home is where He is and promises to be, namely, in the Jerusalem temple.

Now, however, when the true and chief Shepherd of souls comes on the scene, while the comforting images are the same, the only difference is where He now leads His flock. Continue reading “We Follow and Rejoice”